Weird and rather scary error

[Azunai]

So my dad just hollered up the stairs for some PC aid and when I came down I found this:



He gets it upon booting up the PC. I don't really know what it means but I know svchost is rather important for your PC so I don't really get why it would suddenly need a license renewal? His Windows copy is a perfectly legal OEM that came with the system.

Good virus system that scans every day, so it's not that.

[Lameduck]

Dont know what it is, but it is discussed here
http://forums.v3.co.uk/showthread.php?p=1166418

[Azunai]

Aye I found that one upon googling as well. The thing is this guy seems to be having it with a random program he forgot to deinstall or something, I get it with svchost... hmm

[Jabbs]

svchost being a service manager, I would suggest looking at services that are set to start at startup.  Perhaps there is a service that didn't uninstall itself when an associated program was removed?

If you don't know where services are, then you can go to RUN from start menu on XP and type services.msc

You could scan through the list but you could also find svchost, go to properties and then dependencies to see which services rely on svchost.  Most of course will be fundamental windows services but there might be one in there that you know could be set to 'DISABLED' and hence wont try and start at startup.

[Browne]

Start here, I'm sure you'll find a solution. If not, you can contact the Authors here.

[Bart Read]

Hi there,


We have recently become aware of this issue, where somebody has misused an evaluation of {smartassembly} to try to protect a piece of malware they have created, and which masquerades as the svchost system process. You may find the following information useful.

http://www.simple-talk.com/community/blogs/bart/archive/2010/01/21/87936.aspx


Thanks,


Bart Read
Red Gate Software Ltd

[Liberator]

Or the authors can beat you to it and join our forum .

Thanks for joining and providing us with this info Bart, we hope that their use of your compiler doesn't tarnish your product or business in any way.